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The Student Who Got Radicalized in Junior High

“I was the kid reading volume 3 of Capital while my friends played Super Smash Bros. tournaments.” Photo: Kyle Dorosz

Aaron Jones, Student and After-school Teacher

Where’re you off to?
Radical Political Thought class. I go to New School. It’s an introductory class where we talk about traditional liberatory left politics. Good stuff. I’ve been radicalized since middle school; I was the kid reading volume 3 of Capital while my friends played Super Smash Bros. tournaments. Growing up, my friends and I would do things like organize camps for homeless people in abandoned buildings. You know what’s interesting? It wasn’t just homeless people living in those spaces. There were a lot of people who just wanted to leave society proper.

Do you ever consider leaving society proper?
Oh, certainly, yes. Every day. Just jump on a freight train and go.

Lightning Round

Age: 20.
Last read: “I just finished Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed for my book group. It’s just — ugh. She’s great.”
Last watched: “Derry Girls, which is set in occupied Northern Ireland. It has this ’90s-sitcom vibe, except there are plot points where, like, the IRA explodes a bridge.”

*This article appears in the January 21, 2019, issue of New York Magazine. Subscribe Now!

The Student Who Got Radicalized in Junior High